To most, it was a night like any other. And yet, inside one of the converted cells that had supposedly been decommissioned long ago, a young girl's small hands trembled violently as she shook her mother's shoulder.
"Mommy? Mommy, wake up..."
The woman lying motionless on the cold stone floor responded with nothing more than a weak, agonized groan.
"Mommy...?"
Her skin felt like ice beneath the child's fingers.
Panic surged through the little girl's chest, each breath coming in ragged, terrified hitches as she pressed her hands against her mother again.
Desperate, the child looked around the dim, cramped holding cell for help.
But the other prisoners either remained curled together in tight huddles or stared back at her with hollow, sorrowful eyes.
Nobody moved.
They'd been kept captive for long enough to know what happened to those who eventually succumbed to the brutal side effects of whatever it was they were being forced to manufacture.
